Reuben Bristow and Some Unhappy Cheyenne
One of several in the Bristow family to bear the name, Reuben was born about 1855 in Alabama, the fifth known child of John Orrick and Sophia Cunningham Bristow.1 Reuben grew up in Bourbon County, Kentucky, where his father had returned to settle near his mother and half brothers, the Colcord family, after unsuccessful attempts at farming in Alabama and Arkansas. John and his little sister, Mary Jane, had been orphaned in 1820, when their father, Doctor John Sandidge Bristow, died of an unspecified fever in Missouri, where he had gone with his eldest brother Julius to sell some cattle. Their widowed mother, Louisa Metcalfe (1798-1842), married four years later a friend and neighbor, Charles B. Colcord (1789-1854). Charles and Louisa had six children.2
In the 1870s, Reuben's uncle, William Rogers Colcord (1827-1901), formed a cattle company to raise beef in the wild country along the southern Kansas border with the Indian Territory, and young Reuben came out to work as a cowhand. Uncle William's son, Charles Francis Colcord (1859-1934) — who went on to become a prominent citizen of Oklahoma City and a founder of the state historical society — recalled how rough life on the Great Plains could be for the first white settlers in a speech given in February, 1934, at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, and furnished a firsthand account of how Reuben met his end in an Indian raid.3
This raid took place in the fall of 1878, when the Northern Cheyennes broke out under the leadership of those chiefs, Wild Hog and Dull Knife, left their reservation near Darlington; and killed a number of people, among others four of the cowboys on our range, Fred Clark, Frank Dow, Jim Lawson, and a cousin of mine, Reuben Bristow, who had come out to us from Kentucky. [. . .]
The morning of the Indian raid, Reuben Bristow and Fred Clark left our ranch headquarters on Red Fork Creek, driving a team of mules, with a wagon, en route to the Cimarron Salt Plain, for a load of rock salt, for use elsewhere on the range. They had evidently just reached the high divide between the Cimarron and Salt Fork watersheds near Jug Mott, when they met the band of Northern Cheyenne warriors, by which they were quickly surrounded. From the tracks and marks around where we found them, we could tell that the Indians had come up all around the wagon and had shot Reuben Bristow in the head from behind. The mules the boys were driving were very much afraid of a gun and the marks in the ground where they had been standing showed that they had been very restless. The tracks of the Indian ponies indicated that the Indians were all around the wagon and one could see plainly where, at the crack of the gun, the mules had plunged forward and jerked the wheels off the ground. Then the Indians had chased the wagon, filling the bodies of both the boys full of arrows. The panic-stricken mules ran down the slope from the high divide into the valley of a small branch or ravine, where they were brought to a sudden stop by a thicket of willows which were of sufficient size and elasticity to lift its wheels from the ground when the mules could drag it no farther. The Indians had cut the traces and taken the mules, leaving the bodies of the two youths in the wagon bed, where they had fallen.
I pulled four arrows out of Bristow's heart, shot in from the right side under the arm, and drew three or four out of Fred's body. My father later sent these arrows to Hon. James Beck, who was a United States senator from Kentucky.
A site for a grave for the burial of the remains of our slain friends and companions was selected, back up the slope, near the divide where they had met their tragic fate. The September weather was intensely hot and dry, there having been no rains for several weeks. It surely was a hard job to dig that gravel with shovel and spade in that dry joint clay. Always, two of us would dig while the third member of our party would remain on watch at the highest point on the near-by divide. When one of the two diggers would get tired, he would mount guard on the high point, while the one thus relieved would go down and take his turn at helping to excavate the grave. Finally, when the grave was large enough to hold the two bodies, our next effort was to extricate the wagon which was resting on those bent willow saplings. Some of the largest of these had to be cut and the vehicle was released from the thicket. Then, with riatas tied from saddle-horns to wagon tongue, it was pulled up the slope, out of the ravine and into position at the grave. The transfer of these remains from the wagon into the grave — swollen as they were by decomposition to twice their natural size — was a gruesome task as well as a sad duty.
When we had finished covering the bodies in the grave some one said that a prayer should be offered. All three of us were uneducated cowboys who bad had no chance to attend church services or Sunday school, so none of us knew what to say or do order the circumstances. Both of the other two declined to do what all of us thought should be done, so both said to me, "Charley, you will have to say something." Now we all believed, as all men who are reared out in the open must and always will believe, that there is a God, who rules and overrules in the affairs of men. We had watched the sun, moon and stars in their courses; we had night-herded by the north star, for years, using it as a time-piece; every spear of grass in the prairie verdure, every flower that spangled its face, every wind that swept the plain and every note sung by the birds bore witness to the existence of a great, unseen, Divine Power. So, knowing in my own soul the existence of such a Supreme Being, I took off my hat and raised my face to the skies as I said, "God, take care of these poor boys." Such was the prayer that I offered.
The Cheyenne tribe had separated into two divisions, near the Platte River, more than forty years before. The Southern Division had drifted southward, first to the Arkansas and, later, to the Canadian, while the Northern Division had drifted northward to the Yellowstone River country. After the close of the Sioux war, in Dakota, in 1877, the Government decided to reunite these two branches of the Cheyenne tribe in the Indian Territory, the Northern Cheyenne people having made a common cause with the Sioux in that last great war. The experiment was not a success, as the Northern Cheyenne people were never reconciled to it. This band of Northern Cheyenne which went north under the leadership of Little Wolf, Dull Knife and Wild Hog, in the early autumn of 1878 consisted of about 300 people, not over eighty of whom were warriors, the rest being old men, women and children. Many of them were killed but eventually, the rest of the members of the band were permitted to remain in the north. Two other Northern Cheyenne bands were held at the Darlington Agency until 1881 and 1883, respectively, when they, too, were permitted to return to the north, where a reservation was set aside for them in Montana.
As stated before, Reuben Bristow was my cousin and we bad been boyhood playmates. He had come to our range on the Comanche Pool on a visit from Kentucky, which was as enjoyable to us as it was to him. Fred Clark was a young Virginian of a prominent family and of the highest type of manhood. [. . .]
Reuben Bristow had a brother, Bill Bristow, a cow-puncher in Montana. When he heard of Reuben's death he came down to our ranch. The Indians were still unsettled and a good many of them hunted on the range south of us.
While Bill Bristow and I were out hunting one day, we saw a little smoke and knew that it must be from an Indian camp. This was somewhere on the head of Whitehorse Creek, just north of the Cimarron River. The camp was under the bluff in the thick timber on the low bottom. We left our horses in the canyon east of the camp, walked as far as we could, then crawled up behind some sumac bushes to the edge of the brush almost over this camp. Three Indians were lying on a pallet and two were cooking around a small fire. Bill thought this was a good time to get even for his brother and the men that the Cheyennes had killed on our range.
We had made our plans, and just about the time we were ready to shoot the two who were standing and then kill the other three as they jumped up, we heard a noise to the left. When we looked in that direction, here came a great string of Indians a half-mile long. There must have been a hundred of them. We let the hammers of our Winchesters down, backed out, and got on our horses and left just as quietly as we could.
According to an entry in the Bristow-Colcord family Bible, Reuben died 15 Sep 1878.4
A slghtly different version can be found in another old-timer's account, provided by T. E. Beck, who joined the Comanche Pool Cattle Co. a few years after Fred and Reuben died.5
The greatest curiosity of all is the salt beds on the Cimarron River, at the mouth of Buffalo Creek. Here, from salt springs, the brine is evaporated during dry weather forming cakes of salt from which a wagon load may be scooped up in a few mintes. Thousands of tons have been hauled from these plains and used for stock salt and in many instances farmers have used in for curing meat, and for other domestic uses.
Near the crest of the divide leading down to the Salt Plains from the north, was the location of the "Lone Grave" which contained the bodies of two young men killed by the Indians, fall of 1878. The story related to me nearly four years afterwards by the cowboys on the ranch, I give it as near as I remember it at this time. Two ranch hands, Ruben Bristow and Fred Clark, were sent with team and wagon to the plains for a load of salt. They would reach the salt springs that evening and cross the river to the south side at the mouth of Buffalo creek where water and fuel could be had for camping over night. Next morning at the headquarters ranch the mule team was found dragging the double-trees. Three cowboys were sent out to take the back-track and find out what had happened to the two boys. Following the main trail to a point a few miles from the salt springs the wagon was seen in a clump of bushes in a little gully leading into Jug Mott creek. On reaching the wagon the bodies of the victims were in the wagon bed. Tracing back to where the wagon left the trail it could plainly be seen that the wagon had been surrounded by a number of Indians, supposed to be Cheyennes, who shot their victims without warning. The shooting scared the team which ran off and wrecked the wagon in the gully. The only thing that could be done was to bury the bodies as they had lain in the hot sun from the day before. With the shovels to be used in getting salt, a grave was dug near the trail on the top of the divide and the two bodies in their own clothing, and wrapped in a wagon sheet were given as respectable burial as circumstances would permit. In late years I have heard the story that a number of arrows had been shot into the bodies after death. It would be an unusual thing for the Indians at that late date to have bow and arrows, but no doubt it was true. Those who related the incidents of the murder never said anything about the arrows in the victims.
Bill Bristow may not have lived much longer than his younger brother. The Mortality Schedule of the 1880 Federal Census for Arapahoe County, Colorado, records that a William Bristow, age 29, a laborer from Kentucky, had died in March from consumption. If this William was Reuben's brother, he succumbed to the same disease that took the lives of his father, John Orrick Bristow, and grandmother, Louisa Metcalf Bristow Colcord, and great grandmother, Jane Shelton Clarkson Bristow. Until antibiotics provided an effective therapy six decades later, tuberculosis — as we now term consumption — was the leading cause of death.
Although there had been some confusion about exactly where Fred and Reuben died and were buried (whether it was in Oklahoma or over the state line in Kansas), the mystery has been solved. Thanks to some thoughtful residents of Woods County, Oklahoma, the grave of the unlucky cowpokes has been preserved, and recently was marked with a new stone. For more on the story, complete with picture and directions, see the Freedom Cowboy Cemetery page, part of the fine Okie Legacy
site.6
Notes:
1 He was named for an uncle, Reuben Louis Bristow (1811-1871) or for a great uncle, Reuben Lewis Clarkson (1779?-1849). John (1818-1876) had struck out on his own after his mother's death in 1842. In 1845 he was in Macon County, Alabama, where he married Sophia Cunningham (1827-1908). The family was counted in neighboring Russell County in 1850. (Russell County, Alabama, 78. Family 1080.)
2 John's aunt, Mary Beckley Bristow, mentioned her hapless nephew in her journal. See Neil Allen Bristow, ed., Aunt Polly's Diary.
3 "Reminiscences of Charles F. Colcord" in Chronicles of Oklahoma Volume 12, No. 1 (March, 1934), 5-18. The complete article can be found online. Also, a sketch of the energetic and talented Charles Francis Colcord has been prepared by his great grandson, Ray Colcord.
4 New England Genealogical and Historical Register, 14: 71-72., Jan 1960. "Rubin Bristow was killed by the Cheyenne Indians in Comanche Kansas, 15th Sept. 1878." [The Colcord Ranch headquarters was in Kansas, but the site of his death was across the line in what is now Oklahoma.].
5 "When The Territory Was Young", Chronicles of Oklahoma Volume 14, No. 3 (September, 1936), 360-364. See the online version.
6 According to the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) the grave is located at N36� 57.590', W99� 8.570'.)
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